Earlier this month I featured a guest appearance in The Lioness and the Spellspinners from a recurring character, and I thought I’d do another today.  Marjoram, my Good Fairy, has a tendency to push her way into every story, including this one…but today I thought I’d share the first scene of another character, familiar from The Storyteller and Her Sisters.  Although he’s ten years younger here!

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Karina didn’t really mind going out to the vegetable garden with Forrest.  Honestly, it sounded better than sitting inside and peeling turnips or unsnarling yarn.

She ought to be getting into town, finding out how to get away from this rock.  But everyone had work they needed to do this morning, Richard had promised to give her a ride in the afternoon and that was soon enough.  She’d get there earlier walking, but her ankle still felt tender and it would be easier to find out about a ship with someone local to help.  She still wasn’t entirely clear on how she was going to pay for passage, but…she’d work that out.  Or she’d find out about the ship with Richard, and then sneak aboard later when neither he nor the ship’s captain was looking.  That would serve too.

In the meantime, it wasn’t so bad sitting in the sun, leaned up against a convenient rock.  There hadn’t been many sunny meadows in her past.  None at all, in fact.

The quiet was new too.  It wasn’t silent, with the distant murmur of waves, bird cries and occasional scurrying of small animals in the underbrush.  Repairing a fence involved some knocking together of wood and other sounds.  But behind all that there was a deep quiet, a quiet of empty land with far fewer people on it than she was used to.

It wasn’t quiet like this at home.  At home people were all jammed in on top of each other and someone was always making noise.  Shouts and conversation and creaking carts and a hundred other sounds.  Except maybe in the very deepest, darkest part of the night.  And that was a wary quiet, not a peaceful one.  That wasn’t a quiet you lingered in.  That was a time to get your work done and get gone, quick, before anyone else found you out in the dark.

No, it wasn’t bad sitting out here.  She had pulled the hood of her cloak down over her face, with an announced intention to take a nap.  She did doze a little…and she also spent some time watching Forrest work on the fence, under the cover of her hood’s shadow.  It was a good view.

Arm muscles like that, she had known Farmboy had to be good at something besides knitting.

Forrest was knocking the last fence post into place when a new arrival came into view around a fold of hill.  Karina kept her hood pulled down and studied him covertly, an automatic habit and safeguard—though probably unnecessary here, since the stranger looked to be all of ten years old.

On the other hand, she had met some dangerous ten year olds.  She had been one. Continue reading “Fiction Friday: Royal Guest Appearances” →

Today is Friday the 13th, which always puts me in mind of the good old days when I used to write Star Trek stories and do terrible things to my poor redshirt characters on Friday the 13th.  I don’t write Star Trek anymore, but my regularly-appearing redshirt, Richard Samuel Jones, has gone on to be a cameo character in all of my subsequent novels…no longer in his Starfleet uniform and often without his full name referenced, but he’s still a lot like the person he was back on the Enterprise.

So for Friday the 13th this year, I offer you Sam’s guest appearance in The Lioness and the Spellspinners.  Rin, also known as Karina, has been sitting in The Black Lion tavern, trying without much success to decide what to do if she manages to get a substantial pay-off for a job in-progress…

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A crash from the kitchen jarred Rin out of her thoughts, but didn’t cause any real alarm.  It was the sound of a plate breaking, and that was pretty usual.  She wasn’t at all surprised when Sam came out of the kitchen in a hurry, broom in one hand and a guilty expression on his face.

“Was that the second plate this week?” Rin called with a slight smile.

Sam sighed.  “The third.”  He began sweeping his way towards her table.  “Magdala told me I’d better not come back in her kitchen for at least an hour.”  The general man-of-all-work at The Black Lion, Sam moved in a perpetual cloud of broken dishes, knocked-over items, and spectacular trippings.  No new incident ever bothered him for long, though, and Rin watched expectantly for his smile to return.  She could use some of Sam’s usual cheer right now.

The smile didn’t come.  He swept along and stopped in front of her table, looking if anything even gloomier.  “I heard about Old John.  I’m sorry about…”

“Thank you,” Rin said, throat suddenly tight.

“He was always a good sort, wasn’t he?  He used to tell the best stories about when he was in the theater.”  Sam smiled then, but it was a sad smile.  “Not that I ever believed more than half of them, you know, but they were good stories.”

This was not helping.  “Yeah, they were,” Rin said, and cast about for a topic change.  “Hey Sam, what would you do if you were rich?” Continue reading “Fiction Friday: A Redshirt in Fairy Tale Country” →